Jenny Pitman - Grand National Winning Trainer Jenny Pitman /in Featured Legends , National Legends , Trainers /by Simone Wright The Pitman family has a special association with the Grand National, with Jennifer being just 14 months old when she was first put on a pony. When she was 15 her father George Harvey who trained point-to-pointers gave his daughter her first ride in a race on Dan Archer. Just before her 15th birthday Pitman left school taking up a position as a stable girl at Brooksby Grange, where she stayed for two years until moving to a stable in Bishops Cleeve in Gloucestershire, the first time she had lived away from her Leicestershire home. But it wasn’t just her immediate family connections with racing that enhanced Pitman’s racing career – her first husband Richard Pitman, who she married in her teens, was a jockey, and they slowly began taking in a few liveries and then building up their own point-to-point yard. The First Female Trainer to Win the Grand National in 1983 with Corbiere Due to sheer force of will and talent she turned the derelict yard into a first-class training complex.

She had her first win under Rules in 1975 and won the 1977 Midlands National on Watafella. Her first entry into the Grand National was The Songwriter, a 200-1 rank outsider, whose presence was completely eclipsed by Red Rum’s third triumph, and unfortunately was pulled up by Bryan Smart at Becher’s second time round. In 1982 she won the Welsh National with Corbiere , who went on to win the Grand National in 1983, winning by three quarters of a length from Greasepaint. This win made her the first woman to train a winner of the National and in 1984 she became the first woman to saddle the winner of the Cheltenham Gold Cup on Burrough Hill Lad, who had already won the Welsh National in 1983, and would go on to win a Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup and a King George VI Chase. In 1984 Corbiere came third in the Grand National, and did the same in 1985, while 1986 saw her take a third Welsh National with Stearsby.

In 1991 Garrsion Savannah gained Pitman her second Cheltenham Gold Cup victory, this time with her son Mark in the saddle. 1995 saw Pitman enter three horses – Garrison Savannah, Royal Athlete and Esha Ness, with her firm favourites being the former two, and son Mark had difficulty in choosing which to ride, so closely matched were they. It was Esha Ness who shocked them all by finishing first, but to no purpose as this was the year that the race was voided, due to the failure of Jockey Club officials to operate their starting system – a double blow to Pitmans when you consider that Esha Ness had registered the second fastest time in National history (9min 1.4sec). In 1997, she became the only trainer other than Martin Pipe to win all of the big four Grand Nationals, when Mudahim won the Jameson Irish Grand National. In 1998 Pitman was awarded the OBE for services to horseracing and she retired from training horses in 1999, having had a career total of 797 wins, handing over the reins to her son Mark.

She now writes novels with a racing spin and having survived thyroid cancer is a patron of the British Thyroid Foundation. In 2000 she was presented with the Helen Rollason Award for Inspiration which is awarded to women who have overcome adversity and proved an exceptional commitment to sport, inspiring others in the process – an award she truly deserves, having (excluding her trio of the void race of 1993) sent out 39 runners scoring two firsts, one second and three thirds in the Grand National. Jenny Pitman: Grand National Legend Weird Sports Cheats Jenny Pitman: Grand National Legend Jenny Pitman occupies a special space amongst these legends. Not only was she the first female trainer to train a Grand National winner, but her two triumphs at the Grand National were achieved against enormous odds. Jenny Pitman was born to a large family in rural Leicestershire and grew up amongst horses. She left school at the age of 15 to work as a stable girl and pursue her love of horses. Within a few years she met jockey Richard Pitman, and married when she was 19.

In 1975 Jenny Pitman obtained her trainer’s license, and succeeded in training her first winning horse that year – Biretta. Her involvement in the demanding world of National Hunt racing put her marriage under a great deal of strain, and she separated from her husband in 1977. Jenny Pitman, Grand National legend, soon began notching an impressive string of victories, and rapidly earned herself the respect of the racing community for her success rate and the care and respect with which she treated her horses. In one famous incident after witnessing jockey John Francome riding one of her horses too hard she stalked to the unsaddling enclosure and floored him with a right hook before kicking him out of her stable. In 1983 Pitman entered her horse Corbiere into the Grand National. Corbiere started the race at 13/1 odds, and pulled off a stunning victory to make Jenny Pitman the first ever female Grand National winning trainer. This was not the end of Pitman’s success at the Grand National. In 1993 her horse Esha Ness won the Grand National only to have the victory annulled when nine riders responded to a false start.

She did not have to wait long to make up for this loss and in 1995 Royal Athlete defied 40/1 odds to hand Jenny Pitman her second Grand National title. Jenny Pitman’s success was not limited to the Grand National. The Grand National legend also achieved two Cheltenham Gold Cup wins, and wins at the Irish and Welsh Grand Nationals amongst a host of prestigious titles. She was subsequently awarded an OBE for her contribution to horseracing. Jenny Pitman, Grand National legend, retired in 1999, handing her training yard over to her son Mark and having beaten a path for female trainers and jockeys in the uncompromising world of National Hunt racing. Free Bets Jenny Pitman & Corbiere - Aintree Grand National Aintree Grand National Jenny Pitman & Corbiere May 21st, 2012 by admin In the 1983 Grand National, Corbiere became the first ever winner to be trained by a woman. That woman was Jenny Pitman – someone many people in the UK associate with the world’s greatest steeplchase just as they do Ginger McCain.

The 1983 running was Corbiere’s first Grand National. He was to go on to have a remarkable record at Aintree. The horse was to run in the Grand National for five consecutive years. After his 193 win, he finished third in 1984 and 1985, fell at his 4th attempt, and finished 12th in his 5th and last National which was won by Maori Venture in 1987. Jenny Pitman had worked with horses from the age of just 15, having learned to ride as a toddler. She was formerly married to jockey Richard Pitman (who famously finished second in one of the great Nationals ever on Crisp in 1973, when Red Rum just caught him on the line) and their son Mark worked with her as a trainer, taking over the business when she retired in 1999. Jenny Pitman’s reputation as a trainer peaked when in 1997 she became the second trainer to have won all four British Isles Grand Nationals (English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh), along with Martin Pipe.

Corbiere had been named after a lighthouse in the Channel Islands, near to the home of his owners, the Burrough family. Jenny Pitman trained Corbiere since he was three and considered him to be brave, saying he was the only horse she knew who would continue running through a hailstorm. There were 41 horses in the 1983 National. Corbiere, ridden by Ben de Haan, led from the first fence with the favourite, Delmoss, alongside. On the second circuit they were overtaken by Hallo Dandy, an outsider at 60-1. But at Valentine’s, Corbiere regained the lead and went on to finish first, with a three-quarter length lead over the fast-finishing Irish raider, Greasepaint. Corbiere’s victory meant he had to carry 10lbs more the following year, when he finished a very creditable third, this time finishing behind Greasepaint and the winner, Hallo Dandy. In other words, the first three placings had been reversed, though Hallo Dandy’s weight had been raised by just 1lb from the previous year.

Pitman was to go on to have another Aintree National winner in the shape of 12 year-old Royal Athlete in 1995, ridden by Jason Titley. And she also trained the “winner” of the National that never was – as Esha Ness was first past the post in the National of 1993 that was voided due to the false start. But perhaps her greatest training achievement ever came back in 1991 with Garrison Savannah. In the 91 National, Richard and Jenny Pitman’s son Mark was on board that year’s Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Garrison Savannah. The horse was bidding to become the first winner of both races in the same year since the great Golden Miller 57 years earlier. At the second last, “Garry” led from Seagram and began to pull away as they came to the last. Mark Pitman then extended the lead even more and as they came to the elbow, he looked all over the winner. But the horse weakened with just 100 yards to run, as Seagram rallied on the long run in to win. He remains the closest yet to achieving the unthinkable since Golden Miller.

Leave a Reply Grand National history: A first for Pitman - Channel 4 Racing Home > News > Grand National history: A first for Pitman Grand National history: A first for Pitman 27 Mar 2013 13:45 pm Jenny Pitman also trained Esha Ness, who "won" the 1993 Grand National Jenny Pitman also trained Esha Ness, who "won" the 1993 Grand National Corbiere triumphs in nail-biting finish for first female winning trainer (1983) With Red Rum and Aldaniti still fresh in the memory, the Grand National was entering a golden period when Corbiere’s win in 1983 provided another historic chapter. Jenny Pitman, who learned to ride almost before she learned to walk, left school at 14 and became a brilliant trainer in her own right. In 1997 she completed the set of all of four of the big Grand Nationals – English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh - only the second trainer, after Martin Pipe, to do so.

Corbiere was a three-year-old when first sent to Pitman, and was earmarked as a National contender when winning the Welsh National at Chepstow the previous December. He was ridden by Ben de Haan at Aintree and was a 13-1 chance behind 7-1 favourite Grittar, the previous year’s winner. At Valentine’s on the second circuit, De Haan kicked for home, seeing off the outsider Hallo Dandy, but Greasepaint – renowned as a fast finisher – loomed into the picture. Corbiere bravely held on to win, by just three-quarters of a length. He went on to feature in the next four renewals of the famous race, coming third twice - when it was felt he was poorly treated by the handicap on each occasion - before falling in 1986 and finishing 12th the year after as a 12-year-old. As for Pitman, her association with the race continued with Esha Ness – who “won” the infamous void race of 1993 and Royal Athlete, the winner in 1995. BBC viewers often enjoyed her interviews with BBC anchor Des Lynam.

Now 66, she retired from training in 1999 and embarked on a successful secondary career as a novelist. Grand National 2016 It is illegal for anyone aged under 18 to gamble Grand National Welcome to your complete guide to the Aintree Grand National - an indispensable aid to finding the winner of the world's most famous and prestigious horse race. We have tipped five of the last 12 Grand National winners, including Pineau De Re at odds of 33-1 in 2014 and Neptune Collonges at 40-1 in 2012, so be sure to check out our 2016 Grand National tips . Ladbrokes are again paying FIVE places for each-way bets on the National instead of the usual four - which rewarded people who backed the favourite Shutthefrontdoor last year, who finished fifth. CLICK HERE to claim your 5 places with Ladbrokes.

The 2016 Crabbie's Grand National takes place on Saturday 9th April and a total of 22 races will be run during the Grand National 2016 Festival, which starts with Grand Opening Day on Thursday 7th and is followed by Ladies Day on Friday 8th, before Saturday's Grand National Day. Aintree Racecourse will host over 150,000 racegoers across the three days, while an estimated worldwide audience of 600 million people will tune in to see the Grand National live on television on Saturday. Our site contains everything you need to know about this magical race which is one of the highlights of the sporting year. Indeed the four-and-a-half mile marathon event captures the imagination of its millions of watchers around the world, thanks to its ability to consistently produce thrilling finishes and heart-warming stories, as horse and rider try to conquer the mighty Aintree fences. The Grand National has made the likes of Red Rum, Aldaniti, Jenny Pitman and Ginger McCain household names, whilst fences such as Becher's Brook, The Chair and the Canal Turn are equally familiar.

Indeed, given the raceï¿½s long history, it is no surprise that so many milestones have been reached and remarkable stories have unfolded. For example, no horse has run in the Grand National more times than Manifesto, who competed in eight renewals of the race between 1895 and 1904, winning twice, in 1897 and 1899, and finishing third on three other occasions. The Aintree Grand National was first run in 1839 and Bruce Hobbs, aged 17, was the youngest winning jockey in 1938, on Battleship, the smallest horse ever to win. Dick Saunders, aged 48, was the oldest successful rider on Grittar in 1982, his first and only Grand National ride - after which he announced his immediate retirement. Jenny Pitman was the first woman to train a Grand National winner, capturing the race for the first time with Corbiere in 1983. She succeeded again with Royal Athlete in 1995 and finished second with Garrison Savannah in 1991.

In 2009, Venetia Williams became the second woman to saddle a National winner, with Mon Mome (11 years after she had actually ridden in the race). Plenty of the raceï¿½s most fascinating stories revolve around its fearsome obstacles. Did you know that the least number of horses to complete the race is two, in 1928: Tipperary Tim and Billy Barton (who remounted)? Likewise, in 2001, when Red Marauder beat Smarty, only four of the forty horses completed, with two of these having to be remounted. See our Grand National History and Facts and Figures sections for more fascinating Grand National stories - charting this most famous of horse races down the years. With history in mind, we are advocates of learning lessons from the past when trying to find the winners of the future. For example, did you know that prior to last yearï¿½s renewal, only Red Rum had managed to carry more than 11st 5lbs to victory since 1957? Many Clouds broke that sequence with his win in 2015 under a welter burden of 11st 9lbs.

Just as noteworthy is the fact that no seven-year-old has won for more than 70 years and we have to go back to 1915 to find the last successful six-year-old. In fact, since 1992, only eight of the six and seven-year-olds to take their chance have even completed the course (including Cause of Causes last season and Kruzhlinin the year before that). Experience, therefore, counts in the Grand National and 17 of the last 20 winners (including 10 of the last 11) were aged either 9, 10 or 11. In that period there have also been two eight-year-old and one twelve-year-old winner, although the last teenager to win the race was over 90 years ago (Sergeant Murphy in 1923) and none have made the frame since 1969 (Hello Bud was a gallant 7th in 2013 at the grand old age of 14, whilst Tranquil Sea was also 7th last year aged 13).

For those wanting to see this magnificent event live, we have all of the information youï¿½ll need to make the most of your visit to Aintree, including information on getting to the racecourse, ticket details, and a summary of all of the enclosures and facilities, many of which have been significantly upgraded in recent seasons. As well as its fascinating past, Aintreeï¿½s unique course contributes to the mystique surrounding the event. The fence-building programme starts approximately three weeks before the Grand National meeting is run, with around 150 tonnes of spruce branches sourced and transported from forests in the Lake District. Each fence is made from a wooden frame and covered with the distinctive green spruce. The Grand National course remains the ultimate test of horse and jockey. The race comprises two full circuits of a 2ï¿½ mile (3,600 metres) racetrack, where challengers face some of the most testing fences in the world of jump racing including Becherï¿½s Brook and The Chair, now two of the most well-known landmarks in the country.

Becher's Brook, the sixth fence on the first circuit, was named after Captain Martin Becher who was unseated from his mount, Conrad, and fell into the ditch when leading in the first ever Grand National in 1839. "Water tastes disgusting without the benefits of whisky" he reflected and the obstacle bore his name from that day. When it was first run at Aintree in 1839, the race featured a solid brick wall as one of the obstacles, although that was abandoned after five years. Ahead of the 2013 renewal, some of the fences were re-designed for safety reasons and to aid animal welfare. While all 16 fences still look the same, the heart of four obstacles has been changed. The third and 11th fences, which are open ditches, have been built using natural birch as their cores, while the 13th and 14th (which are the last two fences second time round in the National) now have plastic birch. These have replaced the traditional rigid timber frames, which had foam padding along the leading edge, but were solid. The hope is that the alternative will be more forgiving. Find out more in our Course and Fences section.

The Grand National is also one of the rare major sporting events in which amateurs still can, and do, take on professionals. This applies to both trainers and jockeys and in the 167 running's of the Grand National it has been won on no less than 41 occasions by a horse ridden by an amateur jockey, although it's been 25 years since Marcus Armytage won in record time on Mr Frisk in 1990. This is hardly surprising as the sport has become ever more professional and the prize money, now over ï¿½1 million under the sponsorship of Crabbieï¿½s, has risen so dramatically that few trainers or owners will entrust potential winners to jockeys still perceived in some quarters as to be inexperienced or part-timers. However, part of the Grand National's enduring charm is not the amateurs who succeeded, but those riders from the Corinthian ranks whose fruitless, and often hopeless, attempts to conqueror the fearsome fences that have added so much colour to the event.

They have included: the Duque de Alberquerque, Tim Durant, Aidan Oï¿½Connell and Brod Munro-Wilson - a mix of playboys and men who worked as deep sea divers for six months a year and spent the other six trying to win the National. We may not see their like again, but the amateurï¿½s long love affair with the Grand National is not over yet, proven by 2011 runner-up Oscar Time - who was ridden by amateur jockey and millionaire businessman, Sam Waley-Cohen. The same horse and jockey were also an admirable fourth in 2014 (before going on to win the Becher Chase that December) and 15th last year. © Where To Bet Ltd 2004-16 (contact us: wheretobet@hotmail.com) BBC News | Sport | The first lady of horse racing Tuesday, March 16, 1999 Published at 17:50 GMT Sport The first lady of horse racing Corbiere (right) was Pitman's first National winner Jenny Pitman's decision to retire from horse racing at the end of the season will leave a huge void in the sport.

John Inverdale describes how Jenny Pitman announced her retirement The 52-year-old, who won two Grand Nationals and two Cheltenham Gold Cups during her career, decided to call it a day with the knowledge that her legendary Weathercock House stables will be run by her son Mark. "Mrs P" as she is affectionately known, began her racing education at 15, as a stable lass for trainer Chris Taylor. Mark Pitman will now take over Weathercock House It was shortly after that she met and married leading jump jockey Richard Pitman. During her marriage, her involvement with the sport grew, as she began to prepare point-to-pointers and hunter chasers, and when the couple divorced, she decided to set up as a professional trainer at Weathercock House in Lambourn. Within a short time, she was enjoying great success, culminating with Bueche Giorod lifting the Massey Ferguson Gold Cup in 1980. Pressure Although famed for her tough reputation and sometimes abrasive attitude towards the media, Pitman suffered from the initial pressures of working in the top flight and gave consideration to leaving the business completely.

Legendary trainer Fred Winter wisely persuaded her otherwise and within years she was a household name due to her exploits at Aintree. Jenny Pitman and champion jockey Tony McCoy She trained Corbiere to a memorable Grand National win in 1983 and then achieved the same feat two years later with Royal Athlete. She was denied a third victory in 1993 with Esha Ness when the race was voided because of two false starts. During the same period she won the Welsh version at Chepstow three times (sending out three of the first four home in 1986) and the Scottish National at Ayr once. And she became only the second trainer to complete a full set when Mudahim lifted the Irish Grand National at Fairyhouse in 1997. Poignant Her decision to announce her retirement at Cheltenham is all the more poignant in light of the fact that she also became the first woman to land the Gold Cup in 1984 with the victory of Burrough Hill Lad - possibly the best horse she ever trained. With all her achievements came a fair degree of controversy.

If Pitman had not earned a reputation for edginess, she may have avoided some of the darker episodes of her career - but the "first lady of horse racing" has not regrets. Jamie Osbourne: Hooked on Pitman "There is so much worry and pressure leading up to a big race. It's a nerve-wracking business but if you really care for something that you do that's how much it takes out of you." Jamie Osborne can testify to Pitman's no-nonsense style when he took a punch from her as retribution for tightening up one of her horses at Ayr one year. "What can I say about her? She has got a great left hook." said the jockey. Traumatic She survived a traumatic 1992 when several owners, including Bill and Shirley Robbins and Mel Oberstein, removed their horses from the yard. And she was also accused of running Golden Freeze as a "stalking horse" in the Gold Cup, a tactic designed to stop hot favourite Carvill's Hill. But she and jockey Michael Bowlby were cleared of any malpractice at a Jockey Club inquiry.

Her ability to fight back during those difficult days marked her out as one of the very special trainers of her era and it came as no surprise when she was awarded the OBE in 1998 for services to racing. But despite all the highs and lows, Pitman's recent struggle with cancer, which she overcame, may well have been her biggest victory. And after nearly a quarter of a century of training horses, she can look forward to spending her retirement in good health and with great memories. "When you look back through my life, starting off as a stable girl working weekends in a small yard to training a Grand National winner, it's been a fairy tale really." 3 April 1993: Esha Ness 'wins' the Grand National that never was | Sport | The Guardian On this day 3 April 1993: Esha Ness 'wins' the Grand National that never was The 1993 Grand National was the race that never was, with two false starts, and John White thought he had won it The 1993 Grand National was eventualy declared void and was not re-run that year.

Photograph: Malcolm Croft/PA John White Friday 2 April 2010 19.11 EDT First published on Friday 2 April 2010 19.11 EDT Share on Messenger Close I was feeling really good going into the race. Esha Ness was 50-1 but he had hit some good form and he was fancied well enough. I'd been on him once before, he jumped quite well and seemed a good horse. And Jenny Pitman wouldn't be sending him up to Aintree if he didn't stand a good chance. To be honest, I can't remember much about the first false start. We get called back, the race was restarted and off I went. That was it. From then on, at least until the race ended, everything went according to plan. People were trying to flag us down as we were going. A lot of people have asked me: "Did you not know? Why didn't you stop?" You wonder about the people who ask me that. I like horses. I wouldn't put a horse through that kind of pressure for nothing, I wouldn't risk their health or my own unless I thought it meant something.

It's a big race, a big stage. There's a lot of people watching, both at Aintree and on television across the world. You don't ride it like an ordinary race. It's a different track, big fences. You have to have your wits about you, and just focus on getting your horse around the track. I'd ridden there plenty of times, I'd had a second place before, but I wanted to win the bloody thing. I was focused. The horse jumped well, and it was a very quick time – the second fastest in history, I read later. What I know for sure is that he would have been very hard for any other horse to beat. On the day, the horse was in great shape. He was fit, he travelled well – he was in top order, and that's not easy to get right. And he took the fences well. He made a little mistake at one stage, I was on one side for a little bit but I managed to get back level. As I crossed the finish line, I thought I'd won the National. But Dean Gallagher walked up to me and said: "John, this race mightn't go ahead." That's the first I knew of it.

After that, it was chaos. It's easy for people to say different now, but on the day, after the race, no one knew what the hell was going on. The horse pulls up, the saddle's taken off the horse. My valet was John Buckingham, who rode Foinavon when he won in 1967. He was insisting I needed to weigh in. He said: "This could be OK, go on, you've got to get weighed in." So I went to the scales and they wouldn't let me weigh in. I don't think I hung around. I had a shower and drove back home. I forget when I found out for sure that it wouldn't count. Of course I was disappointed. As his time proved, if everything had gone off normally he'd have had a good chance. But there's no point feeling bitter. You can't change what went on. We were asked to walk up to the tape and make a line, but I think the tape got caught in Richard Dunwoody's neck. It was just an accident. These things happen. I hope it doesn't happen again, mind – that would be a bit much. Then what happened The race was never rerun.

White is now a trainer, based in Ireland.

Jenny Pitman won the 1995 National, her second after Corbiere in 1983, with Royal Athlete Rebecca Adlington rounded off her British Championships with victory in the 400m freestyle to complete a hat-trick of titles Published: 2 Apr 2010 Vasily Smyslov, who died last weekend at 89, was renowned for his calm approach to chess as well as his deep understanding of the game Published: 2 Apr 2010 Mark Allen came from behind to beat Stephen Hendry 5-4 while Ding Junhui saw off Peter Ebdon Published: 2 Apr 2010 Sébastien Loeb edged in front of Jari-Matta Latvala to take a 24-second lead at the end of the second day of the Rally of Jordan Published: 2 Apr 2010 Stephen Moss meets Jenny Pitman | Books | The Guardian Share on Messenger Close As a trainer, Jenny Pitman had a fearsome reputation: a barrel-shaped woman who had to be tougher than any man to survive the rigours of racing and was not afraid to tell her enemies what she thought of them.

The racing press were lambasted on a regular basis and she once gave a jockey a smack across the face for hampering one of her horses in a race. Channel 4's John McCririck called her "the cuddly one" and Desmond Lynam used to flirt with her on Grand National day (having trained the winner twice and the horse that came first in the "race that never was" in 1993, she came to personify Aintree), but everyone else gave her a very wide berth. Three years on - she announced her retirement from training at the Cheltenham Festival in 1999 - two things have changed. There are only dogs at her rambling house in Berkshire - she says her acre-and-a-half doesn't allow her to keep horses - and she seems to have turned into a pussycat. There is no hostility, even when I mention a recent case in which she went to court to contest the monstrous allegation in a book that she had faked her cancer to win public approval. The book was pulped and the Royal Marsden hospital, where she was successfully treated in the late 90s, received half the damages she had won in court.

Leaving racing was a huge wrench - she is only 55 now and there is a tradition in jump racing of going on into your 70s. The reasons were several: her thyroid cancer, first diagnosed in 1997, and the fear of a recurrence unless she started to take things a little easier; financial advice that demonstrated the advantages of quitting while she was ahead; and the fact that she was a mother. It is her feelings about the latter, most of all, that give the lie to her reputation as a tough nut. Her son, Mark, was her stable jockey but had just taken out a training licence and was looking for premises. The prospect of meeting (and perhaps beating) his horses did not appeal. "I thought, 'How am I going to feel if I win a Grand National or a Gold Cup and Mark finishes second? How am I going to feel if one of my horses short-heads him? I'm going to get absolutely no pleasure out of it.

In that case,' I said to myself, 'why I am still training racehorses?' Fathers would have a different viewpoint - fathers would beat their sons and probably enjoy it - but mothers can't feel that way." The solution was to hand her stables over to Mark and retire, though she still lends a hand at the yard occasionally. "The stables are 22 minutes away - just nicely out of the way. I wanted to be far enough away that I wasn't tempted to be getting on the pitch too often. When Mark's away at the sales or on holiday, I'm there every morning and I'm as bright as a button. It's a bit like being a grandparent: I just get to deal with the horses and I don't have to deal with things like European rules and regulations that don't make any sense to anybody. I just deal with the good side of it and then Mark comes back in time to save me from getting in any deeper." Initially, leaving the yard - both her job and her home for 25 years - was tough. "I did have regrets," she says. "It was like I was hanging on to a life belt.

I'd done that job all my life and it was very difficult to let go." But retirement has been far from quiet: because of her identification with the National, she was asked to narrate a video on the history of the race; she is in demand as a broadcaster and public speaker - typically, she says she bought The Idiot's Guide to Public Speaking to learn her new trade - and now she has published a novel called On the Edge. Her publishers, Macmillan, have been admirably upfront about the commercial thinking. Pitman is a well-known name whose autobiography was a bestseller; perhaps she can emulate the success of another racing institution turned writer, Dick Francis - not with mystery and murder but with the more subtle skulduggeries that sometimes afflict racing. The first novel - there will be a second in November - is billed as the story of "an outsider in the privileged world of racing, a woman struggling to succeed in a male-dominated profession". You will not be surprised to hear that that pretty well sums up the career of JP, or Mrs P, or Missus, as she is called by herself and her omnipresent husband, Dave Stait, who used to be her assistant trainer.

Jan Hardy, the hard-pressed heroine of the book, is to all intents and purposes Jenny Pitman - the first woman to make an impact on the male bastion of National Hunt racing. Pitman is uncharacteristically coy about whether the book is based exactly on her own experience. She is keen to keep the reader guessing. There is an attempted rape in the book. Did that ever happen? "No," she says, "though I was chased around the kitchen table a few times." She does, though, admit that the supercilious treatment Jan receives when she applies to the Jockey Club for a training licence is based on real life. When she was setting out in the late 1970s, women trainers were unheard of and the chaps felt threatened. When they saw Mrs P, they felt even more threatened. Why does racing lend itself to fiction? Stait, who sits close by during the interview and likes to chip in - the two have been together for more than 20 years and tend to edit each other's conversations - supplies the answer. "All life is there," he says.

"I've been in the parade ring with scallywags one minute, and five minutes later I'm having a cup of tea with the Queen Mum." There is plenty of high drama, too, and the racing scenes in the book will please the enthusiasts. Pitman struggled in her early years as a trainer: her stables were in a state of disrepair, she had hardly any horses, and her husband - the jockey turned broadcaster Richard Pitman - had left her and their two young sons, Mark and Paul. She says Stait made an impression by being able to fix the oven door one bleak Sunday. They gave themselves five years to make a go of it - and with the help of Corbiere, which won the Grand National in 1983, and Burrough Hill Lad, which won the Cheltenham Gold Cup the following year, they made it. "When Corbiere won the National, most people thought that we were lucky," she says.

"But when Burrough Hill Lad won the Gold Cup the following year, that sat people back on their haunches and made them think, 'Well maybe she does know what she is doing.' Only then did we start to get more owners and horses, and even then they did n't come in a big lump; they drifted in." She won the National again in 1995 with Royal Athlete and the Gold Cup for a second time in 1991 with Garrison Savannah, which came agonisingly close to doing the National-Gold Cup double for the first time in 60 years. Her horse Esha Ness also "won" the National that never was in 1993, when the race was declared void after a false start. By the mid-90s Pitman was a fixture at Aintree, and she captured the nation's heart by weeping on Lynam's shoulder when the 1997 race was postponed because of a bomb scare. If anything, it is her emotionalism - rather than her toughness - that defines her.

She and Stait waited for almost 20 years before marrying because she put her sons first - "I didn't want the boys to think that I was divorcing them," she says. The relationship with her first husband still appears strained. "We don't get invited to lunch at the same time," she admits. "He made a comment a few years ago that he didn't particularly like Jenny, but he respected her. I'd rather be respected than liked, because you have to earn respect." She is treating the new career as a novelist in the same way she used to treat racing - with total commitment. Just as Francis used to rely on his late wife Mary to novelise his stories, Pitman admits to having the help of both Stait and a writer, Peter Burden, who stays in a barn nearby when the going gets tough. But she still claims the book is hers and produces a large wodge of manuscript covered in her annotations. She has long conversations about plot lines with Burden; he types them up; and she then attacks the typescript with a red pen. The result won't win the Booker, but it won't see her fall at Becher's first time round either.

"I'm as obsessive about the writing as about the training," she says. "I can't do anything without giving it my best shot and I'm not interested in a book going out that just has my name on it. You ask me about the book and I can tell you where I've been with it, what I've done with it. I like to sit outside in the garden writing. I can be out there for five hours and I don't even realise how long I've been there. I get so involved in the story that I'm almost living it." That, of course, is because she has lived it. · On the Edge is published by Macmillan on March 14, Cheltenham Gold Cup day. (Betting note: Dave Stait suggests backing Shooting Light in the big race.)

Question: Jenny Pitman won the Grand National for the first time, with which horse?
Answer: CORBIERE